Life is more than a series of defeats
“Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful,” George Orwell declares at the start of his review of Salvador Dali’s autobiography, called The Secret Life of Salvador Dali. “A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying,” Orwell continues, “since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.”
I’m not sure about that first sentence. There’s disgrace, and there’s disgrace. Making a fool out of yourself and committing a grievous crime may both be disgraceful in their differing ways, but while most of us can manage the first on a fairly regular basis, few ever lower themselves to the second. There is a puritanical streak in Orwell that gives his moral outlook a hard and somewhat inflexible cast.
I also don’t see the connection between the “disgraceful” of the first sentence and the “defeats” of the second. Defeats are not necessarily disgraceful. They can be more ennobling than victory, as Leonidas and his Spartans demonstrated at Thermopylae.
Most aren’t, of course. Most are losses of chump change — though enough of those can over time add up to a major embarrassment. And, once again, Orwell’s puritanism leads him to exaggerate the negative. Few lives end up amounting only to a series of defeats. The defeats may outnumber the victories, and almost always do, but victories do happen, and they may in quality easily offset the defeats, and in any case do lend some perspective to the sorry messes our lives tend to be.
A few weeks ago, a piece about Rilke in the Times Literary Supplement showed how great a part Rilke’s prodigious self-pity played in shaping both his personality and his art. Of course, you can get away with self-pity in poetry, which can bring out the brooding and Byronic in all of us. When Rilke writes a poem out of self-pity, it isn’t his self-pity that stirs in our imaginations, but our own, at its most glamorous.
That same self-pity encountered in prose, or in life, is something we would rather not be reminded of. However much we may indulge it in private, to go public with our self-pity is tantamount to committing indecent exposure.
Like many things in life, one’s self is best approached obliquely. It is, of course, one of the mysteries of existence that one not only can but must maintain a certain distance between oneself and one’s self. Irony, whether sly or wry, can do the trick. It isn’t a matter of objectifying oneself, but rather of characterizing oneself — seeing oneself as a certain kind of character.
Since it is better to laugh at yourself than feel sorry for yourself, I try to look at myself from a comic angle.
The young Goethe, driven to contemplate suicide after a failed romance, would sit in front of a mirror with a knife at his throat until the absurdity of the situation could no longer be ignored and he started laughing. Nothing will wise you up better than noticing the ludicrous aspects of your amorous mishaps and longueurs. Once you’ve got that far, the lighter side of your other false steps, miscues and blunders becomes obvious as well.
The fact is, Orwell was wrong: Viewed from the inside, one’s life doesn’t seem to be a series of defeats at all. It looks more like a series of pratfalls.
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Heh heh, that’s good: ‘series of pratfalls’. And how true!
Among other notables who would agree with you, Samuel Beckett would be most impressed with your superb little essay. Life is very much all about mishaps, pratfalls, and being able to put aside the knife and laugh at one’s self. Among the not so notables, I am also impressed. Well done.
Orwell wasn’t necessarily wrong, as wrong goes. This may have been the way he viewed his own life, from the inside. Which, given his achievements, is disconcerting. If he was brought up to focus on his failures rather than celebrate his accomplishments – it happens; I was – and never got past it, he would be suspicious and probably jealous of anyone who could think well of himself.
Frank, I think you can afford to be generous enough to make room for his unfortunate point of view (which surely hurt himself more than anyone else) without labeling it “totalitarian,” which, in Orwell’s case, amounts to an accusation of hypocrisy.
Point well-taken, Jericho. “Totalitarian” is indeed unfair to Orwell. I have accordingly revised the sentence. Thanks for the advice.
Excellent stuff.
Happy birthday, Frank. (Unless it was last Wednesday?) I’m glad you see your life in such debonair light. That’s the way to go. It’s a gift Orwell may not have been given. But it’s a gift.
“The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel.” — Horace Walpole. Although it’s probably not quite that black and white, either…
Anyway — many, many happy returns.